While Marat Safin’s career has often been defined by fleeting moments of brilliance, the 2000 ATP Tour season was the moment when everything consistently came together for the powerful right-hander.
Safin won seven of his fifteen tour-level titles from April to November that year. Such a burst of sustained success was somewhat unexpected for a 20-year-old who had started poorly in only his third full year on Tour, but Safin’s form proved so good that he rose to the 18th No. 1 in the history of the PIF ATP Rankings on 20 November.
After starting 2000 with 11 defeats in his first 16 matches, Safin entered the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell as world number 35. Six wins later, he took his second ATP Tour title after a run that included victories against Top 10 stars Nicolas Lapentti and Magnus Norman and home favorite Juan Carlos Ferrero in the championship match.
Safin entered the Top 20 for the first time after winning the trophy in Catalonia. Perhaps more importantly, the success also seemed to flip a switch in his head. A week later in Mallorca he added another clay-court trophy to his collection and then reached his second ATP Masters 1000 final in Hamburg, before lifting his first trophy at that level in Toronto in early August.
In September, Safin dispatched Pete Sampras in straight sets with a stunning performance in New York to claim his first major crown at the US Open. Hard-court titles in Tashkent and St. Petersburg, and another Masters 1000 crown on indoor carpet in Paris, completed his title run in 2000. From Barcelona’s start in April, Safin posted a 68-16 record for the rest of the year.
After rising to second place after the US Open, it was the victory in Paris that proved to be the decisive factor for Safin in his quest for first place. At 20 years and 10 months, he was the youngest player at the time to reach the top of the PIF ATP Rankings, although that record was soon broken by Lleyton Hewitt (in 2001) and later by Carlos Alcaraz (2022).
Going into the season-ending Nitto ATP Finals (then the Tennis Masters Cup), Safin needed three match wins to guarantee he would finish as ATP Year-End No. 1 presented by PIF, but lost to Sampras in the group stage and Agassi in the semi-finals, allowing Gustavo Kuerten to give him that honor. Despite the disappointing ending, Safin’s victory at No. 1 remains one of the most remarkable mid-season turnarounds in ATP history, an event that Safin later admitted may have even surprised himself.
“For me it was very strange in my experience to become No. 1 and to be No. 1,” Safin, who returned to No. 1 twice in 2001 and spent a total of nine weeks there, told ATPTour.com. “I wasn’t ready for that because a few months earlier I couldn’t imagine that I would have a chance to be No. 1. I was in the Top 50, sinking and playing very poorly. I underestimated myself… I didn’t believe in myself, and I saw myself as weaker than others, which is unbelievable.”
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